[I wrote this story based on a prompt for the Penprints Flash Fiction Dash. Yay flash fiction! If you check out the Penprints site in early June, you will be able to see the stories from everyone who participated! The Penprints site is <https://rosalievalentine.wordpress.com/> ]
Painted with Light
Duomik slipped
through the liner’s banquet hall, a poncho wrapped around him, bare feet sure. Despite the blasting warmth of the liner’s
heating system, the floor carried a trace of cold.
“That’s one of
them—the divers,” a teenage girl hissed to her mother, abandoning her plate of
fish. “Ask him!”
“Excuse me,”
the older woman called sharply.
Duomik turned
back, squinting against fluorescent lights and tourists’ stares. Skinny, pale, he was anything but impressive.
“Does it
work? The lights? Does it bring them out?” she asked.
“It says in the
brochure, na?” Duomik wrinkled his nose.
The stinks of tourist food filled the room, so he breathed out, then
didn’t breathe in.
“Public
relations,” the woman scoffed. “But is
it true?”
Answering would
mean taking a breath. So Duomik shrugged
and eeled out the door. He darted up the
ladder to the moonlit deck, not bothering to use his hands.
Clean salt
air. He breathed deep and swept off the
poncho, then held it over his head as he ran toward the stern, letting it sweep
behind him like a cloud of jellyfish tendrils.
The thrum of the icebreaker ship carried back over the water, a deep
song.
“Evening,
Dominic,” called the sailor on watch.
“Even-ing,”
Duomik called back, careful to answer to the name. His papers said that his name was Dominic
Quiroga and that he had been born in Ushuaia, Argentina.
His papers
lied.
“Where’s your
coat, man?” the sailor frowned. “It’s
freezing out here!” Fifty yards off the
bow, chunks of ice bobbed in the sea.
Beyond the icebreaker’s wake was the ice sheet, almost twenty feet
thick, covering the ocean like armor.
“Na, I’m
not cold.” But Duomik let the poncho
drop back around his shoulders.
“Lights!” came
a sudden shout from the upper deck.
“We’ve got lights!”
In less than a
minute, the crew and passengers were gathered along the rails, staring at the
water with binoculars and S84 phone-cameras.
Cries of “There! Do you see
that?” “I told you they were real!” and “It’s all done with special effects, I
say,” echoed from every side.
Duomik,
crouching low, watched the lights with mild interest. Pale green and yellow, the lights circled one
another in a complex pattern before drifting farther under the ice and out of
sight. While the tourists continued to
stare at the empty water, Duomik slid backward through the crowd and paced to
the far side of the ship, now all but deserted.
Barely visible
under the ice sheet, a single light flickered.
Duomik did not shout. Instead, he reached into the waterproof sack
at his waist and brought something out.
With a flip of his wrist, he sent it flying. As it struck the water, the tiny object began
to glow.
Over the next
few days, the cruise liner made another seventy miles southwest through the ice
sheet. It would not go much farther lest
it hit the reefs off the Antarctic coast.
On the fourth
day, the liner’s engines fell silent. “Our
professionals will be diving first, to make sure that the dive area is free of
obstructions!” declared the master-of-ceremonies. Although it was only 0900, he wore a tuxedo, his
lapel concealing a wireless microphone.
“Once they have established a safety perimeter, those guests who have
subscribed to our full tour experience will be invited to dive! Other guests are encouraged to watch from the
gallery, where live video from our divers will be available!”
Duomik, shielded
in his heated diving gear, waited until it was his turn to dive. Despite the air tanks dragging at his
shoulders, he swirled easily away from the ship, following his assigned partner
out under the ice.
They did not look
for underwater obstructions; the liner’s elidar had already checked. Instead, they activated glowing drones, which
would follow a course in and out of the tourists’ sight all day long.
Duomik shook
his head as they released the last. He
hoped no tanaia-fish would try to eat one.
He was relieved
when it was time to return to the ship.
The tourists, with their wild movements and bright lights “guaranteed to
attract underwater denizens!” were hard to keep inside the perimeter. When they spotted lights, they tried to chase
them. Obviously, that couldn’t be
allowed—they would discover that they were only seeing drones.
While Duomik
did not care what the tourists discovered, he knew that they could die if they
ran out of air. So he shooed them back
toward the ship, his arms waving like kelp.
Three more
days, and the ship’s engines were silent again.
“Tomorrow, we turn toward civilization,” announced the MC.
As the sky
darkened, the light show began, right on schedule. The teenage girl dragged her mother to the
rail, only to squint in disappointment.
The lights were too far away!
She let her
mother stay there, and jogged along the rail.
If she had come on this cruise just to see distant lights that didn’t
even show up properly in photos, her friends would tease her to death. “Kylie, you’re obsessed. Everyone knows merpeople aren’t real.” She could hear them now.
Now she had
reached a deserted stretch of deck. Up
ahead—there was that diver, the blond one.
Did he see something? “Excuse me!”
Duomik climbed
onto the rail, ignoring the girl. It was time to go.
He dove—no
heated suit, no heavy gear—straight into the ocean. He kicked, shooting away from the ship. He had a report for the Council of Six, ai
yes. And what a report it would be.
The girl,
white-faced, stared after him. He would
die in the cold! Was that what he
wanted? Should she call someone?
Then she saw
the lights. First yellow shapes on his
skin. Then rims of blue.
“Look! Look!” she shrieked. But before anyone could join her, the merman
was gone—vanished under the ice.
(Kirkuk)
